Take, for example, the ambition to “make your venture-backed startup profitable”: to develop, market, and distribute a product or service that’s never existed before, in a form that’s valuable and accessible enough for large numbers of people to want to pay you for it, in sufficient quantity that your revenue consistently exceeds your costs.
Joining an early-stage startup means that resources are scarce, process is non-existent, and goals shift by the day. And tried-and-true playbooks will only go so far, as what works in a big company doesn’t always easily port over to a small startup setting.
Pick a customer instead of an idea: “One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was that when you're starting a company, you often think you're picking an idea, but you're really picking a customer. It's actually pretty easy to change your idea, but it’s way harder to change the customer you're serving,” says Agrawal.
You can do what's called the board mission pledge where the people on your board are required as a condition of being on your board to pledge that they'll use their business judgment under Delaware law to support the mission, not just the narrow interest of shareholders. You can build, we call it an LTSPV, which is basically a financing instrument... See more
If you’ve ever worked at a fast-growing startup, you’re probably familiar with the concept of “technical debt.” Code is scrappily thrown together so that the product can function. It’s done with the understanding that this debt will accumulate and eventually cause things to break if not addressed down the line.